Presbyterian Church of Cape Cod

Pastor James A. La Belle’s published and upcoming works for your edification and nurture in Christ –

Upcoming Works…

Puritan Documentary: All of Life to the Glory of God

Pastor La Belle will be teaching on the Zeal of God as one of the guest speakers in the upcoming Puritan Documentary Disc series, All of Life to the Glory of God. In essence, the message being sent by the project is this: “The Puritans are the authors the men you listen to and love today are reading–and therefore you should be reading them too.” It’s a message being sent to the church of Christ on behalf of today’s Reformed pastors, encouraging the people in the pew to start reading the authors their pastors are reading.

To be released June 2019!

Pre-order exclusive: You’ll be invited to a closed Facebook group with the directors and producers where you can ask your questions and see behind the scenes video and pictures from production. We’ll also have Q+A from special guests, including Dr. Joel Beeke.

EXCLUSIVE PRE-ORDER GOODIES – DELUXE EDITION OF PURITAN MSRP $150

~ PRE-ORDER EXCLUSIVE $100 ~

http://www.puritandocumentary.com

DISC 1

Feature length documentary with contributions from theologians, pastors and teachers from around the world. Runtime: 100 minutes*.

DISC 2 and 3

15* teaching sessions on different Puritans and 15* teaching sessions on different Puritan themes.

WORKBOOK

Built around the teaching sessions for Disc 2 and 3.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PURITANS BOOK

A special, decorative, exclusive hardback book by Dr. Joel Beeke and Dr. Michael Reeves.

Published Works…

Deepen Your Christian Life Series

From the late 1500s to the early 1700s, Puritan ministers wrote thousands of Christian books that contain massive amounts of biblical, doctrinal, experiential, and practical instruction to energize your Christian life. In the early seventeenth century, nearly twenty percent of the material coming off English presses consisted of Puritan sermon material popularized in book form. Unfortunately, many believers today find it difficult to read the antiquarian Puritan language and, when they attempt to do so, find themselves more frustrated than energized. This new series, Deepen Your Christian Life, presents in contemporary language the major teachings that several Puritans wrote on subjects that are seldom addressed adequately, if at all, today. Finally, you too will be able to enjoy the Puritans and see, by the Spirit’s grace, that they really do energize your Christian life.

Click on the links provided to order from Reformation Heritage Books.

Deepen Your Christian Life Series: Living by God’s Promises (2010)

In Living by God’s Promises, Joel R. Beeke and James A. La Belle draw from stellar Puritan treatises on divine promises by Andrew Gray, Edward Leigh, and William Spurstowe, and offer them in contemporary language for today’s readers. Moving beyond historical interest, this book explores a topic that is vital for Christian living. By God’s grace, it will help you treasure the promises that God establishes in Christ and conveys in His covenant love to comfort you in sorrow and strengthen your faith. With the Spirit’s blessing, this book will energize and deepen your life as you appropriate the precious promises in God’s Word.

Deepen Your Christian Life Series: Living Zealously (2012)

In Living Zealously, Joel R. Beeke and James A. La Belle address the much overlooked topic of Christian zeal. Having mined the depths of Puritan wisdom on what it means to live earnestly for Christ, they explain it in a way that is familiar to our modern ears and applicable to our souls. Beeke and La Belle do us a valuable service by helping us see the importance of Christian zeal and encouraging us to obtain it. Read this book and ask God to deepen your Christian life with a burning and holy zeal.

Deepen Your Christian Life Series: Living In a Godly Marriage (2016)

The Puritans believed that godly marriages were foundational for the future life of families, churches, and nations. Therefore, they wrote prolifically on the subject of marriage, seeking to bring biblical reformation to this subject in a comprehensive way. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other previous Reformers had begun this task, but the Puritans took it much further, writing a number of detailed treatises on how to live as godly spouses. Out of the wealth of material available to us from the seventeenth century, Joel R. Beeke and James A. La Belle have gathered together insights from the past and summarized them in a contemporary form in order to encourage modern day coupled to glorify God in marriage.

Preparing for Marriage – Biblical Guidance from the Puritans

A focused excerpt from Living In a Godly Marriage.

Preparing for Marriage presents biblical principles for seeking and preparing for a spouse. You must first seek Christ as Lord and Savior, and then depend upon God to direct to your spouse in His timing. With this foundation, you must seek a spouse actively in God’s way: by much prayer for wisdom, depending upon God, and discerning if a potential spouse is suitable—by assessing reputation, countenance and demeanor, speech, apparel (and the motivations it reveals), companions, education, and counsel of parents. God will grant success if we renounce our own wisdom, practice self-denial, and avoid dependence upon outward appearances. This work is essential for parents and all young people before seeking a spouse.

Preserving the Honor of Marriage: Biblical Guidance from the Puritans

Preserving the Honor of Marriage explores the biblical command for marriage, “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God” (Eph 5:21). It is needed in our day when, in many cases, submission in marriage has become either oppressive or irrelevant. 
But to honor our spouse is to honor the God of marriage and the covenant of marriage. Fulfilling our God-assigned roles is a matter of faithfulness to God. Two principles underlie mutual submission: Christ and His Church, and the marriage covenant. The love of Christ for His Church and the Church’s joyfully following Christ are the foundations for biblical submission. Submission is Christ-honoring when we see it as a vital part of covenantal commitment. This booklet is important for those who are married and those preparing for marriage.

Bite-size Theology – Soul Food on the Christian Life

I love bite-size theology; not because I don’t enjoy the whole steak, but rather because I greatly enjoy every single bite of the steak. Bite-size theology that presents itself as the whole of theology is dangerous and false; but bite-size theology that enables us to comprehend and ingest the whole elephant of theology one bite at a time is good stuff. So I love bite-size theology. I love packing theological truths into single sentences or small paragraphs of, what I call, soul food. I love a sentence so profound that every word deserves dedicated, focused, and deep thought; a sentence so convicting that every time you read it over, it stabs at your sin and drives you to Christ, the infallible Physician; a sentence so true and enlightening with gospel truth that it seems to grow with every reading and release more and more of its blessing and value to the soul. I love soul food that, like the rungs of a ladder, leads you closer and closer to Christ in your thinking, speaking, feeling, and living. And I love bite-size theology because it can easily be remembered and recalled throughout the day to digest it, by meditation and prayer, for practical usefulness.

This week I want to share some soul food with you, gleaned from Thomas Adam, on the subject of the Christian life. I encourage you to read each entry slowly, prayerfully, thoughtfully, humbly, teachably, and hungrily. Let each entry penetrate your mind, pierce your heart, move your affections, and enflame your will. Let each entry be used of God to teach you more about the Christian life and quicken your pace in it.

1. The great mistake of life, and the cause of all wickedness and misery in the world, is looking for happiness here, in the things of this life, where it can never be found, Ps 4.6-7.
2. The only happiness in this world is preparing in it for another, Col 3.1-3.
3. So far as we come short of the will of God in our lives, we come short of happiness, Ps 119.47.
4. Show me where the will of God is and I will know where pleasure can be found, Prov 3.13-18.
5. The will of God is our pole-star, and with our eyes constantly upon it, we will be carried safely through all storms and tempests to the haven of glory, Rom 12.2; 1Jn 3.2.
6. Thank God for laying His commands upon our hearts and for disposing our hearts to delight in it, for this is not natural to us, Ps 119.32; Eph 2.10.
7. Nothing can support our souls or enable us to pass through this world with any degree of constant satisfaction, but walking with God, in the faith of Christ, as a reconciled Father, doing His will, under His eye, with His help, satisfied in this state of mind, looking no farther, desiring no other riches, and living for no other end than His glory, Col 3.17, 23-24.
8. When we feel no burden and complain of no lack but that of entire sanctification, life will be a continual dying and death will be welcome, Rom 7.22-25.
9. Without the enjoyment of conscience, we can have no other enjoyment at all, Acts 24.16; Heb 13.18.
10. In the case of sin allowed, or weakly resisted, the conscience will not be quieted with hopes and promises; no, nor even with the blood of Christ; for hypocrisy firmly dams up the flow of all heavenly comforts, Lk 12.1
11. The moment we think that we have no sin, we will desert Christ, Mk 2.17; 1Jn 1.8.
12. Pride will carry a man to heaven’s gate, but nothing but humility will find admission, 2Chr 7.14; Lk 18.14.
13. I never was happy until I knew that I could not be happy in this world and consented to wait for it until God’s time and place. This thought will keep me from all self-pleasing in forbidden ways, and reconcile me to all sufferings, all losses and crosses, all injuries and persecutions, and all mortifications, and put a smile on the face of death, my wedding day, Ps 73.25-26.

• The history of the Christian Church is more worthy of our notice than the revolutions of an empire. The Church of Christ has been the object of God’s special providence since the world began and every step of its progression cannot but evidence the power, wisdom, and goodness of God. And its history in the book of Acts in particular is the history of the accomplishment of a long series of prophecies, the history of the transition from the old to the new covenant, the history of the execution of a plan to which all the other parts of the divine administration are subservient, for the Church is the central concern of divine providence, the ordained soul-saving and sanctifying station of God on earth.
• As we begin our Sunday School class on this book, I encourage you to study attentively and read widely. The history of the first age of the Christian Church is “splendid, because it is miraculous; edifying, as it records many noble examples of faith, charity, patience, and zeal; and it arrests the attention and touches the heart, by displaying the triumph of the gospel over the combined malice and wisdom of the world” (Dick).
• I’d like to recommend several resources on the book of Acts that I’ve found helpful. You may want to purchase some of these for more in-depth study on your own or a few of you may want to do a group study together. Either way, I encourage you to read. It goes without saying that we must be reading God’s Word, as it’s the primary means of grace; but it greatly contributes to our growth in faith and practice when we read good Christian literature as well. So I recommend the following books for your use:

Thematic Studies

• The Message of Acts (a thematic study)–Dennis Johnson
• Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles–John Dick
• Paul the Preacher–John Eadie
• Signs of the Apostles–Walter Chantry

Commentaries

• Let’s Study Acts–Dennis Johnson
• The Book of the Acts–F. F. Bruce
• Acts: New Testament Commentary–Simon Kistemaker
• The Message of Acts: John Stott
• The Acts of the Apostles Explained–J. A. Alexander
• A Commentary on Acts–Matthew Henry

Sermons

• Acts: An Expositional Commentary–James Boice
• Acts: Reformed Expository Commentary: Derek Thomas
• Acts: The Church Afire–R. Kent Hughes
• Sermons on Acts, Chapters 1-7–John Calvin

Dear Congregation,
As I begin a new SS class on Acts this week I want to encourage you to make this class a part of your Lord’s Day. The book of Acts is critical to the history of redemption and I’d love to preach through it one day. But until then, I believe a study through it will greatly profit us all. I’ve attached this week’s handout to whet your appetite 🙂 Please pray that God’s blessing will be upon this study and that the Spirit of Christ will use it for our edification and growth in community and fellowship as a congregation.

I invite your input, your questions, and your discussion as we walk through this book together. I’ll be using Dennis Johnson’s book The Message of Acts as a guide for how I approach this class, but I’ll also feel free to touch on themes uncovered by his book if it seems profitable to our study.*

Hope to see you there!

In Christ,
Pastor James

*Study Outlines can be found here:  The Message of Acts

This coming Lord’s Day, Pastor La Belle will be preaching from Acts 22:16. In his last sermon on baptism (Nov 2018), he showed that baptism is a confession of our guilt and an acknowledgement that we need the cleansing that only God can give. This time Pastor La Belle will show us that baptism is a sign and seal of God’s forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ–and it’s as such that it holds out to our weak faith a mountain of comforts and assurances.Please pray that God will make our children’s baptisms efficacious to his salvation in due time and that He’ll use it to encourage and strengthen the faith of all who witness it. 

Acts 22.16 outline

March 24, 2019 Bulletin